Tag Archives: Victorian Ripley Ville

rediscovering Ripleyville’s 100th post : a Heritage Matters update about Bradford Council’s Planning Policy proposal for land on Ripley Road. Your chance to help shape the council’s policy for land near to where the northern site of Bradford’s only industrial village once stood!

Heritage Matters Update

Ripley Road Planning Allocation

Just over a week ago (2016/01/08) I happened across a planning document referring to Ripley Road in West Bowling and the land across from the Edward Ripley & Son’s Laboratory building which dates from 1916 (see photos below).

Laboratory Building Ripley Road

Date plaque Laboratory building

The Allocation Site in 1882

The map below shows that in 1882 the land would have included;

Ripleys’ ‘New Shed’ (NS),

subsiding pits (SP) for Bowling Dyeworks

and a reservoir (Res).

The eastern side of Ripley Road was used for allotments’ with the lower block of Ripley Terrace (Nos 67-85), which featured in a recent post, and the Ripley Ville schools building (Sch) beyond (see photograph).

Ripley Terrace & Schools building c 1950s

Wider Setting of Site in 1882

The map shows the features above and the allocation site’s wider setting including Bowling Dyeworks and the rest of the northern site of the industrial model village of Ripley Ville.

Super-imposed on this in red are the outline of the site in the proposed allocation (WM2) and the words ‘Registered Historic Park’ used in the planning document to denote Bowling Park.

Site Allocation : Waste Disposal/Management Purposes

There is a proposal that the whole of this site of 2.35 hectares be considered for waste disposal/management purposes.

The link to the pdf of the planning document, which is on Bradford Council’s site is:-

You need to scroll down to pages 28 & 29 for the part relating to Ripley Road.

Mitigation Requirements

The grounds for the policy and allocation appear sound. The key point about the document are the conditions under which the policy and allocation might be applied i.e when an application to develop the site comes in. On this, the document includes the following paragraph under ‘Mitigation Requirements’ ;

Development proposals will need to ensure the significance (including the setting) of the Registered Historic Park to the south-east of the area is not harmed. This will need to be demonstrated through robust analysis in the heritage statement submitted with the planning application.

Awareness Raising

I was at a public consultation meeting when I was shown the document. I did at that time tell the planners attending about Ripleyville. They did not seem to know of its previous existence. It seems to me that there is an opportunity to make the planners aware of the proximity of this part of Ripley Road to;

the northern site of Ripley Ville, Bradford’s only industrial model village

the pedestrian paths that made and still offer links to what was the Bowling Dyework’s site and Ripley Ville

That mitigation requirement can apply to the Registered Historic Park (Bowling Park) ought to mean that mitigation requirements could be applied to the Ripleyville/Bowling Dyework’s sites. They are of equal significance. Ripley Ville was completed, with the removal and rebuilding of the Alms houses to New Cross Street on the village’s southern site, a year after Bowling Park was officially opened. They date from the same period.

Ripley Ville Alms houses on New Cross St, West Bowling

Recent research, summarised in an earlier post which corrects the errors on Wikipedia, makes clear the local and national significance of the Ripley Ville Working Mens Dwellings with their water-closets in the basements.

Grants or Gains

Another possibility is that some kind of planning gain/grant application (e.g. from Landfill Tax) could be looked for. Heritage signage, minor works, path clearance and reinstatement and the planting of trees, shrubs could be used to enhance the setting of what remains of the Victorian industrial landscape and the northern site of the village after demolition and improve access routes to these.

Action

Ripleyville is a crucial but forgotten part of Bradford’s Victorian Heritage. Make your voice heard in the efforts to promote it to its rightful place in the city’s Victorian history and its heritage.

Here’s some things you can do:-

Tell people about this article. Copy and send them the link to this 100 Up page : Heritage Matters page; http://wp.me/p2qxEI-2hc

Look at the planning document and in your response make sure the planners know about Ripley Ville and take it into account in future planning decisions.

The account on Wikipedia is wrong on a number of crucial points about the worker’s housing built between 1866 and 1868 in the Victorian industrial model village of Ripley Ville, These relate to whether water-closets were installed in each of the 196 Working -mens Dwellings”, on the village’s northern site in Bowling, south Bradford. The errors are identified in this post and a better version of events laid out. The post starts with a RVr news update. It ends by emphasising how regrettable the demolition of the village’s northern site is, in heritage terms.

News Update

Work on the new ‘Ripley Ville rediscovered’ (RVr) web-sites on the Victorian industrial model village of Ripley Ville is behind schedule.

Time has been given over instead to exploring several long trails in archival material about the village’s Victorian beginnings. The searches have focused on the water-closets that are understood to have been built in the basements (cellars) of the 196 Workmens Dwellings of the village.

The water-closet controversy : its importance

If water-closets were installed this would make the houses, in their sanitary status and arrangements, the most advanced then built for the working classes. When taken together with the number installed, this would significantly enhance the importance of Ripley Ville as an industrial model village and of ‘Messrs Ripleys scheme…’ for workers housing.

A previous post on this blog stated that the research needed in rediscovering Ripley Ville was not ‘in any way complete [nor is] what is out there on the internet or in print … adequate to telling the story of Victorian Ripley Ville.’

The proposed new web-sites; Ripleyville.co.uk and Ripleyville.org.uk, will be aiming to improve what this project offers about the old Borough of Bradford’s only industrial model village. This post develops the points about

research

content now on offer on the internet

It deals in particular with content available about Ripleyville on Wikipedia in comparison with the blog posts and pages on this rediscovering Ripleyville (rRV) web-site. The post’s focus is on the content on the Wikipedia site about Ripleyville’s Working Mens houses and on this rRV site and the Wikipedia site about the village’s original Victorian Vicarage. Issues of transparency and best practice in arriving at the Ripleyville story are raised on both topics. The post’s overall message is that for Victorian Ripley Ville this web-site leads, while Wikipedia follows.

rRV web-site Conditions of Use

They tell you what to do and what not to do, so the rediscovering Ripleyville project can do what it needs to do.

They set out:-

The need to license rediscovering Ripley Ville (rRV) content

The status of content elsewhere on the internet about Victorian Ripley Ville

The rRV quality guarantee

The guidelines are for ‘for-profit’ individuals or groups (local or otherwise) and those in the ‘not-for -profit’ or ‘profit-for-purpose’ sectors, who create work or publish to the internet on Ripleyville and related topics.

All visitors to the site should read them. They form part of the conditions of use of the publicly accessible areas of the web-site and its public content.

Local Benefit & Content Licences

Beneficiaries

It is the intention of the rediscovering Ripleyville (rRV) project to bring benefit to the people living and working close to where Victorian Ripley Ville was built and where earlier events occurred that led to the village’s development.

Social Enterprise model

One way of locking in benefit is to license content from this web-site or the research activity of the rediscovering Ripley Ville project. That has always been the intention of this site and the rediscovering Ripleyville project. Licences to funded not-for-profit groups and organisations, the public sector and for-profit publication would command a fee on a sliding scale (details on request).

This is a variation on a model that has been made familiar by everything from High Street charity shops to the Big Issue seller. It is a Social Enterprise model that uses trading to supplement other income streams. It is used by many groups in Heritage-related projects.

Licences for use of content

Need to licence rRV content

For the last 30 weeks a message in the side bar left has requested that not-for-profit organisations apply for a licence to use content from this site.

Previously not-for-profit use of content was allowed where this site was indicated as the source of that content. This was intended to cover occasional reciprocal arrangements.

No rRV licences issued

As of today, 5th February 2015, use of the content of the rRV web-site has not been licensed to any other web-based author, group or their publisher. Nor has it been issued for print-based publishing.

How to recognise licenced content

When a licence is granted, licencees publishing content from this site would be required to include a form of words agreed with this project. Where this was to the web this would include a hyperlink to this site.

A list of licencees and of licensed use of content will also appear on this web-site.

Fair, Friendly, Collaborative, Lawful?

Occasional unacknowledged use of images from this site has occurred and has been brought to rRv’s attention. Inadequately referenced and unacknowledged use of content from this site continues. Blog-post are also appearing on two content scaper sites. Action will be taken against these to assert copyright.

Fair

Are you playing fair?

Don’t copy rRV content without permission or a licence.

Don’t infringe copyright law.

Fair Dealing

Use of content for private use, for review purposes or where this constitutes ‘fair dealing’ within copyright law requires no licence.

Friendly

rediscovering Ripleyville has reciprocal informal arrangements for the occasional sharing of an image or images or text with contributors or unfunded history web-sites of individuals publishing about West Bowling. These are made on an ad hoc (case by case) basis.

A simple request by ‘phone, text or e-mail to this project (see Contacts) is usually all that is needed to agree this.

Collaborative

Use of content where this is in line with the rediscovering Ripley Ville project’s aims or for promotional purposes and by individuals or groups supporting rRV aims is unaffected by this notice and welcomed.

Competitive & Unfriendly

Neither the rRV project nor its main contributor R L (Bob) Walker have (as of 5th Feb 2015), directly contributed content to any other internet site. We have not and do not contribute to the Wikipedia site bearing the Ripleyville name. We have not authorised or licensed use of content from this site on Wikipedia.

Use of the rRV logo

Quality : rRV logo is your guarantee

A process available in doing history is that of triangulation; the use of at least three reliable and different documents or artifacts to confirm or qualify a statement or conclusion. These could be of a different provenance or of a different kind, e.g. OS map, records of public authority, illustrations or photographs, manuscript, diary, newspaper or other contemporary report or account.

Many of the blog posts on this web-site are drafts. They may be and often will be about what is provisional; knowledge accumulated so far.

In order not to over-claim, posts will say if knowledge is provisional or more speculative or where further research is needed.

The rRV logo is your guarantee of quality of research.

The removal of the rRV logo from content published to this site and the content’s use and publication in another document could be unlawful.

The addition of the rRV logo to content generated outside of this project is a form of ‘passing off’ and could be fraudulent in law.

Baths, brewing, brick-making, building a Church, fire-hoses, piggeries, plastering, a public drinking fountain, smoke-houses, stables, water-closets, urinals, ‘1 horse, 2 cows and a duck pond’. This post is about water supply and use in Victorian south Bradford. It gives an update on some of the research I have been doing in Bradford Archives most Fridays over the last couple of months. The significance of Victorian Ripley Ville as an industrial model village and as an example of Working Men’s housing rests largely on the question of whether water-closets were installed. If they were this would be of national significance. In spite of a claim to the contrary, which has appeared on the internet, this question has not been resolved. The research I have been doing has the aim of finding archival evidence for or against the installation of water-closets – from the time when it was supposed to have happened.

The scope of the research has been fairly wide but targeted as to dates and location. It has been on water supply, water use and domestic and industrial sewerage management -and the lack of it – in Bradford between 1865 and 1871. Particular attention has been given to Bowling in south Bradford and the area around where Ripley Ville was built and in which it was built. The time period includes the year in which the Ripleys’ Scheme for building Workmens’ Dwellings in Bowling was announced (15th November 1865) through to the period after a start was made on building the Church of St Bartholomew in Ripley Ville. (1)

This post covers water supply and use during this period and provides a background and context for the installation/non-installation of the water-closets.

Plan of basement of one of Messrs Ripleys’ Workmens Dwellings showing W C. Detail from architects drawings 1865 as submitted for building consent. Source : West Yorkshire Archives.

A follow-up post will look at the industrial and domestic sewerage of Bradford in the two years up to 1867. It will include findings from the Reports of the Rivers Commission published in August 1867. This is when the bulk of the Workmen’s Dwellings of the industrial model village of Ripley Ville were likely to have been built for Messrs Ripley. H W Ripley gave evidence to the Commission on what was done at Bowling Dyeworks to prevent pollution of Bowling Beck. His testimony also has direct relevance to the Workmen’s Dwellings of Victorian Ripley Ville because in it he reaffirmed his intention,

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Copyright

Unauthorised use and/or duplication of material without the express written permission from the author and/or owner of this blog and web-site is strictly prohibited.
Excerpts and links may be used provided that full and clear credit is given to R L (Bob) Walker & rediscoveringripleyville.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Local not for profit organisations and educational institutions should apply for a license for use of copyrighted material.

If you think I am infringing your copyright or license, let me know. I will put it right. Every effort will be made to make good, within 7 days, any content subject to complaint, or otherwise requiring correction.

R L (Bob) Walker

The aims of this web-site are to make more people aware that, for 100 years Bradford, West Yorkshire, had another industrial model village; 'Ripley Ville' and to restore the village and Bowling Dyeworks to their proper place in the story of 'Worstedopolis' (Victorian Bradford)

Housekeeping on this site

I have tried, to the best of my ability and knowledge, to make what appears in this blog accurate in historical terms. If you find something doesn’t ring true, let me know.

There are three kinds of images in this blog; images copyrighted but subject to permissions or license agreements, copies of images collected by me over the last 10 years that I understand to be out of copyright, license free or as yet undetermined and photos I have taken. If you want to get someone else to look at an image get them to come to this blog!

Joint endeavour

This blog, perhaps more than most blogs, is intended to be part of a joint endeavour aimed at rediscovering Ripleyville; south Bradford’s industrial model village. Comments are always welcome. For current options on longer contributions see 'Adding Content' page.